I absolutely cringe when someone says they listen to "emo" bands like Fallout Boy, Panic at the Disco, and Paramore. Hell, I love Paramore but I think of them clearly as pop punk or even a pop band. I hate having to describe to people that the emo I listen to is different than the the Third Wave of emo or most bands on Warped Tour, which seems to carry the mainstream definition of emo these days. Most people don't understand or care, not that I blame them. I guess I just hate thinking that bands like Into It. Over It. and TWIABP will be embraced by the same people who don't give two shits about the "emo" I like (or maybe that means those bands are changing into mainstream bands. The horror!). I like thinking that I'm part of small, select scene where everybody "gets" it. Now that's changing but I'm personally trying to accept it. So I totally understand where you're coming from.
I refer to all of that music as "mall-core", admittedly in a condescending way because of the teenage Hot Topic regulars that love those bands, and the fact that I don't like any of the bands that you just listed in that first paragraph. It's the type of thing where if it extends into what emo actually is, I'll be sad. The new Into It. Over It. and TWIABP are gateways into the genre. That said, it's going to lead to a couple of routes. The one that lures people in and makes them think they like the genre, when in reality they've only listened to one of those two bands. The other is more exciting, and one I think you should be excited for too, it's the one where it leads to people delving farther into the genre and discovering more of these great bands.
Absolutely! I agree with you on there being two routes, and it is indeed the second option that has me excited by the recent attention to the "emo revival". Even if only one person was turned on to the new emo scene and became invested in it, I think it would be worth it. Those light investment fans, while annoying, will eventually fade away. You know, this kind of reminds me about how discussions over the expansion of Hubsk's user base go.